Editor's Note: Some linked articles may be behind subscription paywalls.

Spanish real estate firm Azora bought two hotels from Bangkok-based Minor International, which owns NH Hotels, the two assets’ operator, in a 20-year sale-and-manage-back deal worth 148 million euros ($174.1 million). The deal follows the July 2020 news that Azora’s €680-million European Hotel & Leisure Fund is to focus on European coastal resort destinations.

The two properties, both on Portugal’s popular beach region of The Algarve, are the 383-room Tivoli Marina Vilamoura, with the largest conference center in the region, and 248-room Tivoli Carvoeiro. According to Azora, its funds will continue targeting the sun-and-sand sector across Europe with more than 1.5 billion euros of total investment capacity .

Business advisory Savills reports the outlook for the United Kingdom hotel investment marker is looking strong following the release of numbers that show a 135.2% year-over-year increase in the metric. It said U.K. hotel investment volumes came in at 1.7 billion pounds sterling ($2.3 billion) in the first half of 2021 across 59 deals.

It added the volume is still low compared to the pre-pandemic five-year average of 2.43 billion pounds sterling for the same period. Regional U.K. assets accounted for 56.9% of investment volume and 78% share of transactions. Blackstone’s March acquisition of Bourne Leisure accounts for a large portion of volumes in the first half of the year.

Total investment volumes in London reached 732.1 million pounds sterling, a drop of 46% compared to the historic five year average. Savills said the “positive momentum demonstrates the robustness of the sector and emphasizes the green shoots that are being seen.”

In its latest research, the American Hotel & Lodging Association reports that while leisure travel is returning, the hotel industry will have a long and uneven recovery, especially in urban destinations.

The study found that in the U.S., more than one in five direct hotel positions lost at the start of the pandemic, totaling 500,000 jobs, will not return by the end of 2021. Room revenue will fall from 2019 levels by $44 billion. The membership organization added that it projects occupancy will fall 10% from 2019 levels and that states and localities will lose more than $20 billion in unrealized tax revenue from hotels over the past two years.

The United Kingdom government saw its year-on-year June level of borrowing decline by 5.5 billion pounds sterling to 22.8 billion pounds sterling as its economy slowly recovers from lockdown. All of its borrowing across the pandemic, however, has pushed government debt to more than 2.2 trillion pounds sterling, approximately 99.7% of gross domestic product, a figure the country has not been seen since the early 1960s, the BBC reports.

The June 2021 borrowing number remains the second-highest for June since records began, the article states. The Institute for Fiscal Studies said it expected borrowing to be higher and warned that Rishi Sunak, the chancellor of the exchequer, has “very little room for maneuver” in the forthcoming Spending Review, likely to be in October or November.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, life expectancy in the U.S. fell by 1.5 years in 2020 due the pandemic and other crises. The fall marks the biggest decline since World War II, according to the Wall Street Journal. The newspaper reports that U.S. life expectancy now averages 77.3 years, “roughly the same level as in 2003, erasing years of hard-won gains in the nation’s public health.”

The CDC added the female population saw a decline of 1.2 years, with COVID-19 contributing 79.8% of that decline, while the male population saw a 1.8-year decline, with COVID-19 contributing 68.7%.